Explain idealism, my friend? I wouldn't dare;
my own prejudice is toward the stoic, not the idealist, philosophy.

You see, I tipped my hand there.
Who but a flaming idealist could visualize home sweet home
while surrounded, about and beneath, by a badly polluted river?

The socialism of which you speak, sounds anything but idealistic,
and in this we are in agreement;
I think Seeger chose what he chose, bad as this sounds,
the better to seek refuge from something else,
rather than because it was the appropriate choice for him.
Seeger is not the first idealist
to flee the pragmatic materialism of the generation
into which he was born.

Thus, it is sadly no surprise
that he would have enormous blind spots
and miss what was in plain sight to others.

It means that Seeger is not the happiest role model
in terms of the choices he held to.
I listened for years to what Seeger had to say,
and I took note when he expressed himself
with questions rather than answers.

He questioned censorship and asked how it would be possible
to get free speech on television;
and that's a darned good question to this day.

The answers in which he sought refuge tell a different story.
Seeger was not a simple man
and there will always be paradox and ambiguity in him
the closer one looks.